Chris Hook Leaves AMD, Radeon Technology Group (Update: Replacement Named)

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Paul Alcorn
Editor-in-Chief

Paul Alcorn is the Editor-in-Chief for Tom's Hardware US. He also writes news and reviews on CPUs, storage, and enterprise hardware.

  • KidHorn
    Best of luck to him. in 2001, 320x240 wasn't considered high res. When I got my first programming job in 1991, I had a 640x480 monitor. Which was standard at the time.
    Reply
  • Martell1977
    So I guess he is the one we can blame for the massive overblown hype created about so many of their products over the years? I know fanboys didn't help, but AMD marketing has overhyped their products(bulldozer) while failing on other aspects, like name recognition. From my experience, many people think AMD CPU's are a cheap knock-off of Intel's. Intel has made themselves a household name, AMD has not.
    Reply
  • marcelo_vidal
    maybe he try'n to say phosphor monitor :) Best res back 1980 lol
    Reply
  • bit_user
    320x240 was considered ‘high res’
    Yeah, this is nonsense. He must mean 640x480, which is pretty much where hardware-accelerated 3D started out, in the mid/late 1990's.

    320x240 @ 256 colors was first possible on the original VGA board introduced by IBM in the late 1980's. 320x200 or 320x240 (popularized by Oculus' Michael Abrash) was a popular resolution for software-rendered games in the early/mid 1990's.

    It's a good thing this guy was marketing. Because such a mistake from such a senior engineer would be pretty worrisome.
    Reply
  • kinggremlin
    AMD's offices hadn't splurged for a color television by 2001? Where did they even find a black and white TV post 2000? Has AMD ever had money?
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  • kinggremlin
    20876779 said:
    Best of luck to him. in 2001, 320x240 wasn't considered high res. When I got my first programming job in 1991, I had a 640x480 monitor. Which was standard at the time.

    Yea, no idea where he is getting that from. Original Voodoo released in 96 was great at 640x480. Voodoo2 in 98 did 800x600 and sli did 1024x768 well.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    20877979 said:
    AMD's offices hadn't splurged for a color television by 2001? Where did they even find a black and white TV post 2000? Has AMD ever had money?
    The tech offices I've worked in haven't generally had TVs (except for video conferencing setups that weren't connected to cable or antenna).

    Where we've rec rooms, they've featured pool tables, ping pong, and foosball tables. Active stuff that people would want to do after sitting for hours.

    On 9/11, the news sites were so hammered that cnn.com just had a stripped down page. Definitely no streaming video, on that day (not that there were many news clips on the net, back then).

    BTW, I'm guessing the black & white TV was just something someone brought in from home. Now, it is a bit surprising they didn't have anything better with which to test their All-In-Wonder cards, but I guess that stuff wouldn't have been in a rec room. As those things had tuners, they should've had both cable TV and antennas for testing, somewhere in the office.
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  • derekullo
    The pina-colada in his hand and the sand on the beach don't care what high-res was in 1988 :P

    In all fairness, maybe he just blocked out all the bad pixelized memories.
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  • boanerges57
    He seems really confused about what life was like in the late 90s and early 00s

    In 2001 I had a 1600x1200 19" benq tube monitor

    In 1998 I had a 1280x1024 17" SGI tube monitor (a tweaked sony trinitron)

    Has he actually been there longer? he seems to be remembering the late 80s/early 90s
    Reply
  • bit_user
    20880550 said:
    The pina-colada in his hand and the sand on the beach don't care what high-res was in 1988 :P

    In all fairness, maybe he just blocked out all the bad pixelized memories.
    There is an old quip about marketing: "two drink minimum."
    Reply